Call of Duty and the failure of Newspeak.

Hollywood churned out dozens of in-the-trenches, pro-America extravaganzas such as Wake Island and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo while World War II was being fought.

But the portrayal of the U.S. military during its current engagements has been more subdued and even critical.

Game makers have stepped into the breach. And they’re making huge bucks crafting patriotic entertainment pieces for which the movie industry used to be famous.

It’s actually fascinating to see the blind spot exhibited by Hollywood antiwar types, here. If you had ask them whether they thought Prohibition worked, or whether Just Say No works, they’d immediately reply no, it didn’t. Merely forbidding a behavior doesn’t make it simply go away, and someone would have to be an unsophisticated hick with a naive worldview to think that not talking about something is the same as suppressing it. And yet, they’ve spent the last decades resolutely ignoring the fact that their attempts to tamp down patriotic and pro-military attitudes in the American population didn’t work, and has cost them a lot of money.

Incredible. Then again, it’s not like Hollywood selects for critical thinking.

Moe Lane

PS: By all accounts, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is one heck of a game on its own merits. Whether or not it’s what the above article portrays it as being.